The government claims prices are up only 6.4 percent since 2011. But a shopper trying to feed a family sees chicken up 18.4 percent, ground beef up 16.8 percent, bacon up 22.8 percent, and the price of fuel steadily rising. “The things that are going up in prices are the things I absolutely need to buy,” laments homemaker Jen Singer in a report published by CBS News.

What causes these increases? Sadly and mistakenly, Ms. Singer refers to her problem only as a rise in prices of the goods she needs. She seems unaware that the real problem is the eroding value of her dollars. With precious few exceptions, the staples she buys for herself and two teenage sons haven’t risen in price; the changes she bemoans are due to theft of the value of her dollars. The thieving culprit is a partnership between the Federal Reserve and the U.S. government that manages a slick form of thievery.

In July 2011, the Government Accounting Office (GOA) issued a report doggedly pried out of hiding by Bloomberg News. It showed that the Federal Reserve had created at least $16.1 trillion to shore up the mega-banks after the 2008 banking crisis. Recipients of the bailouts, in round figures, included Citigroup $2.5 trillion, Morgan Stanley $2.04 billion, Merrill Lynch $1.9 billion, and Bank of America $1.3 billion. Slightly lesser amounts in the hundreds of billions were supplied to Barclays, Bear Stearns, and Goldman Sachs. Foreign banks, benefitting from the Fed’s money creation, were Arab Banking Corp., Bank of China, France’s Societe Generale, Japan’s Norinchukin Bank, Germany’s Deutsche Bank AG, Dublin’s Depfa Bank Plc, and Dexia SA in Brussels.

All of this was money that didn’t exist previously. It acquired value by stealing a portion of all existing dollars. The process has long been correctly described by Soviet dictator Lenin, British socialist John Maynard, and others. Both Keynes and Lenin could be classified as champions of honest money.

While this thievery was occurring, an awakening House of Representatives approved H.R. 1207 by a vote of 223-202 in December 2009. It called for an audit of the Federal Reserve, something that has never been done in the Fed’s 100 years of existence. The House bill, however, was gutted by the Senate in a 62-37 vote led by Vermont’s Senator Bernie Sanders, the proud and admitted socialist who regularly votes with the Democrats. His major helpers in continuing the gigantic cover-up were Senators Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).

Not only food but just about everything else, certainly including the fuel needed to heat homes and run businesses, costs more of everyone’s less-valuable dollars.

Government personnel, Federal Reserve officials, and their allies in the main stream media steadfastly refuse to tell the American people two very simple truths: 1) rising prices are the effect of inflation, and 2) what is being inflated is the amount of dollars created by overworked printing presses and computer entries. If Americans understood these truths, the process would stop.

Either it stops or America will grind to a halt. It won’t take an invading foreign army to destroy this “land of the free and the home of the brave.” All that’s needed is a few more years of the kind of economic treachery we have just described. After that, America will beg for mercy from others because it will have ceded what remains of its independence and freedom.